


Twenty-One Words (and Fifty More to be Sadistic)

by NightmareAmpersand



Category: Original Work
Genre: 21W, Angst, Dark, Drama, F/M, FWFL, Fantasy, Fifty Words Fifty Lines, Friendship, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Twenty-One Words, Violence, Writing Exercise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 17,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5735821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightmareAmpersand/pseuds/NightmareAmpersand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a collection of scattered one-shots done in various genre.  They were written as part of a personal writing exercise I call 'Twenty-One Words'.  I'll give individual story summaries in their respective chapters.  I usually write them longhand, so sometimes it can take a bit of time to type them up, but I will continue this series and update as often as I can.  Also, I seem to be completely incapable of determining what tags to use for my works, so please let me know if you think of what should be added to the tags for this collection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

Twenty-One Words: Introduction

I’m sorry this is the first chapter, but this does need a little bit of explanation (and if you don’t want to wade through this, please go ahead and jump straight to [chapter 2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5735821/chapters/13218610) for the first story). This comes from a writing exercise I was subjected to daily in the fifth grade. Basicaly we were handed a list of ten vocabulary words (in that case, the list of words all started with the same letter but I'm not doing that here) and told to write ten connecting or related sentences with those words. As usual, I went overboard and created full stories. I've long since lost the notebook that had these stories but the lessons at least stuck with me. Now I've reinstated them for myself, and I've found that it not only helps my writing and kickstarts a kind of creative boost, but it's way better for personal therapy than any other method I've tried.

So the point of all this is that I find a way to generate a list of random words (in the case of twenty-one words I use a simple and nifty little app called [InspireMe](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inspireme-inspiration-generator/id497173313?mt=8), but there are lots of other methods out there) and I sit down and craft a story out of them, usually within an hour or so. The most important aspect of this one is that I _do not edit my work_. No re-reading, no betas, nothing. It makes a very unpolished piece of writing and there are usually grammar and continuity errors, but that’s not the point of this activity. It’s always about getting something down onto paper and having it make at least a little bit of sense. Sometimes my work comes out tedious or unreadable, but overall when I look back at them I like what I see. Some of the stories I’ve already written take place in universes that I’ve previously created, though many of them I’ve never written down before. Some of the stories turn into fanfics, and those can be fun as well. Some of them have even become new universes for me and I find myself going back to them in subsequent stories.

If I’m feeling particularly ~~masochistic~~ creative or simply want to write longer, I do a variation called Fifty Words, Fifty Lines. It really is what it says it is. I generate a list of fifty words to start. There are plenty of ways to do this as well…InspireMe only creates three words at a time, so I actually don’t use that for this particular method. Currently I use [Random Lists/Random Words](https://www.randomlists.com/random-words) for an ordinary list or, more often, [List of Random Words](http://listofrandomwords.com/) set to words with fifteen letters or less. This is a beast and definitely takes some out-of-the-box thinking to accomplish. With the second site it often makes words that I don’t know and some I’ve never seen before, and it will also throw in proper names and places for good measure, so I spend a bit of time looking through dictionaries and Wikipedia to see how some words should be used. Anyway, the ultimate goal is to make a fifty line story using exactly one word from the list in each line. I usually take the words in the order I’ve copied them down from whatever site I go to, but I suppose you could also pick and choose from the list until all the words have been used. The resulting story will usually be a mess of run-on sentences and obscure and roundabout phrasing, but I can’t deny that my writing has actually improved because of it. 

I’m going into so much detail about this method because I’d really like to see other writers inspired by this. I’ve been through a very long period where I haven’t written at all because of work and life and whatever else…my personal state of mind hasn’t been good. One day I just grabbed a notebook and found the InspireMe app and made a list of twenty-one words and started to write without thinking too much into it. It made me feel better, but more importantly it made me realize just how much I missed writing and how large a part it actually played in my life. I’ve started writing other things again, not just the twenty-one word stories but stories I’ve neglected for a long time that needed finishing and new stories that have sprung from this and other inspirations. I know a lot of you are fresh off of NaNoWriMo and may not feel like heavy writing for a while, but I do encourage you to give this a try at some point, at least for a few days. Posting is optional. :D

As AO3 has a lack of messaging on this site, I do want to let you know that I can always be reached at [nightmareampersand@gmail.com](mailto:nightmareampersand@gmail.com) if you don’t want to leave a public comment. I’m open to anything, from praise to flames, and I do try to respond to anyone who contacts me. So, please enjoy the efforts I’ve put forth for your entertainment and I hope this inspires you to go and do the same. 

Cheers!


	2. Dance of the Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dance of the Spirits...a day-long dance to appease the spirits with the sacrifice of a Chosen One. Many fear this day, but she vows to never be the sacrifice to this unknown and uncaring spirit. When the day comes, though, can even the best laid plans counter the will of something greater?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: through, large, Autumn, pond, pressure, with, husband, flat, spoken, voyage, spirit, uncle, began, whether, carefully, capital, wrote, various, sea, period, cool

The capital city of Aresdal, where she had been born and raised, always had the most spectacular autumns. The clear air gradually turned from the stifling humidity of the summer to the cool breezes of daytime and crisp chill of nighttime. Various festivals were held through this season: first reaping, founders’ day, pumpkin and gourd tossing, final reaping, and sometimes even first snow. The one she looked forward to the least was the Dance of Spirits. Men and women of all ages donned streaming tails of cornsilk and skeletal masks and gathered in the square at first light, greeting the sun just as it spilled over the horizon. Through the entirety of the day they would dance, at first through the town until they ‘caught’ one person and bound them with flat ropes of autumn wheat, then out of the town, past the pasture land’s large pond, and to the sea by twilight. No one was allowed to accompany them on this voyage, so no one knew what happened to the chosen one. Her uncle had been taken when she was six, and he never returned from the sea. Many did not, though some did return. They would never talk of their time at the sea, though each one had been spoken to numerous times. Inevitably, after a period of several months, even they would return to the shore and never come back. She was always so afraid her time would come, despite being in a city of thousands, and so would always hide when they traipsed down her road. She had even laid carefully conceived plans of escape should they try and take her. She still lived a full life otherwise, helping with her family’s market stall as a child and entering a marriage her parents planned for her when she was fifteen. Sometimes these did not work well, but she was fortunate to gain a gentle and attentive husband who genuinely cared for her and whom she loved in return.

When the Dance of the Spirits came around when she was nineteen, she began her day as any other. Up at first light, she cleaned herself and went to care for their two year old son, a bright and bubbly boy who took after his father in looks. Engrossed as she was feeding him and keeping up with his boundless energy, she missed the note her husband wrote to her, explaining that he needed to be away for the day. She never even thought to step foot outside, though she left the heavy wooden back door open so her son could play in the small courtyard while she worked to prepare some loaves of harvest bread. Close to midday, she dropped everything when she heard him scream and cry in abject terror. Running into the courtyard, she stopped cold when she saw eight figures with cornsilk tassels and skeletal masks. 

“No! You can’t have him!” she cried, scooping up her son.

“We are here for you and you will join us whether we like it or not.” Her husbands’ voice and gentle hands soothed her while another bound her. “I am sorry. We must go. The Spirits are waiting.” With firm pressure at her back, she was led out of the courtyard, through the streets, past the pond, and to the sea. She was made to stand in the surf, the water freezing her feet and ankles and quickly climbing up her dress. One of the Dancers let out a shrill, high-pitched whistle, one that was immediately answered by a whistle so loud and so shrill it was painful. The waves frothed not more than five feet from her, though the source of the shriek was not visible.

“Great Master Spirit! We have brought the best of us for you to judge! Please accept our offering!” The waves frothed more violently, and the damp that soaked the hem of her dress gained life of its own, reaching all the way up and dragging her into the raging surf, where darkness enclosed her.

On the morning of the Thawing festival, held after a peculiarly mild winter, she watched her son and husband in the courtyard as they dyed eggs with cheerful, bright colors to hide in the market square later. She’d returned home two days after the Dance of the Spirits, welcomed with relief and love by her husband. Not long afterwards they found out she was with child again. The child in her rounded belly was active, and she had been feeling the same restlessness very acutely lately. Making her choice, she stood from her chair in the kitchen. Her husband caught her eye briefly, but nodded and returned his attention to his son again, the one he’d have to raise alone from that point on. She left, going through the town, past the pond, out to the sea. For a while she simply looked over the vista, where a cold grey sea met a cold grey sky at the horizon. After some time, she saw the surf near her begin to froth and roil.

“Great Master Spirit…I have returned. Please, welcome me back home.” The damp caught in the hem of her dress wound its’ way up and gently pulled her below the waves.

All her life she had been afraid. Afraid of those who never returned, terrified of those who chose to return on their own. She knew now why they stayed, why they went back. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t anguish. It was only love. They were the Spirit Children. The Dance was never about sacrifice to an ancient godling. It was merely giving those who had been lost and scattered aeons ago the chance to return to where they truly belonged, with their family. And what a glorious family it was, indeed.


	3. Solitude, or The Edge of Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you have never been alone in your life, solitude goes from comfort to torture. For the Muses, community is all they have from the time they're taken to the time they die. To be placed in solitude, even knowing your partner is only a few feet away, is a death sentence for them. For August, given the privilege to stay with her partner until his death, this brings the torture of the edge of madness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: lack, mean, chance, earlier, lot, poem, sunlight, everywhere, fuel, chosen, composition, age, exercise, clothing, chamber, pitch, cowboy, reach, fell, Italy, similar

Enforced solitude…the threat of absolute lack of other humans, voices, or any sound other than their own thoughts. August knew the threat; the threat had been made to her and Toby and every other Muse in their compound since they were old enough to understand the meaning of these words. That was why they were all paired at the age of two, first to their chosen partner with their field (an artist, in Toby’s case, to August’s writing), then to a similar pair. The four children would all live together in a home with two Muse mentors. Everything they did, everywhere they went, they were never alone. If by some random chance any one of them was accidentally isolated for a time, an absolute mental meltdown would occur. A lot of Muses who suffered this were never able to recover. With a broken mind, the essential tool of the Muse, they were powerless. An Administrator would arrive with four men in white lab coats, take the broken Muse and their partner, and tell the remaining pair that the two were “going to a peaceful place, somewhere with plenty of sunlight.” Every Muse heard the same story, and every Muse knew exactly what it meant. With the clothing they were wearing as their only possession, the pair would be taken out of the complex and led to a stone chamber in the very back of the gym. Many had been in there normally as it contained all the exercise equipment, but only to this first area. Those who went in there with the four white-coats were led behind the equipment to the rear stone wall. In that wall was a recessed square, high up and well out of the reach of any child. The administrator fit a key to this recess which sprung a door in the wall that revealed a stone stairwell leading underground. The stairs led into a huge chamber, far enough below ground that the air was cool, even chilly, year round. The chamber contained precisely twenty-two cells, built freestanding with walls two inches thick all around and inch thick windowless, sealable metal doors. Each cell, barely as large as a normal bedroom in total area, was divided through the center by a barrier, each one different in each cell. The lucky pairs had a wall like the door, with no chance of getting through. Yes, this would isolate them once again, but the madness came on faster and soon enough you simply stopped caring about anything. The unluckiest had only half barriers made of flimsy pressboard. The pair would be separated, one to either side of the barrier. Once both were inside the metal door closed and locked and the Administrator and his white-coats would ascend the stairwell and seal the wall. The Muses would be left alone, isolated in their cells with only a single gas lamp to spare them the pitch black…and even then only for three days, as the lamps held only enough fuel to keep them going that long.

August looked at her gas lamp. The fuel was almost gone; not more than a few hours remained. Toby had been broken four days ago, lost in the underground tunnels when they were all trying to escape with their Mentors. They were only separated for a couple of minutes, having taken a turn too sharply which caused Toby to lose track of them in the dim light. They were alerted by his terrified screams echoing through the maze, and so was the security force, the black-coats. They needed to run, but there would be no chance of saving him if they still wanted to escape. August told them to run. It was the last she saw of Elia, Kam, Ludo, and Val. She was able to find Toby before the black-coats did, but the damage was done. The screaming had stopped, and he remained in his tight little ball, absolutely unresponsive in his protective shell. The black-coats found them, tranquilized them, and delivered them to medical. She had barely woken up when the Administrator and four white-coats came for them. Now, she and Toby shared the pressboard cell. She stayed with him, usually curled around his inert form for warmth, force-feeding him the mean meals that arrived through vacuum tube, pouring water down his throat, bathing him with water from the sink, tucking him in tightly when she got too restless to lay down anymore. She had done this routine for three days…this was how she knew this was the worst cell. They could be together, yes, and it was enough to stave off her own meltdown. She knew, though, that she may as well be. Toby fell deep, and he was close to giving up completely. She had to watch the decay of a boy that was her brother in all but blood, and she was not even given the option of madness for this. She could only lucidly watch him die, and then she would have to endure her own fall. 

“Toby…” She lay down next to him, curling around him under the blanket on the narrow bed. It was too cold to pace…nighttime had come earlier than yesterday. Autumn was almost there. “Toby, look. The pumpkins are almost ready for harvesting.” Her chatter was nonsensical, she knew, but she needed that sweet illusion that Toby could possibly respond. “Remember that poem we made together? How old were we…five? Six? I wrote about the pumpkins…remember me thinking for three hours, trying to find a word that could rhyme with ‘orange’. Then you carved the poem into the pumpkin, with all these acorns and leaves cut in there as well. It was amazing.” The light in the cell wavered, the bulb flickering as it drew on the last of its’ reserves. “Then, when we were ten, we finally entered the National Contests. I wrote a composition on the gods and devils who played together every Halloween. Then you drew a companion art piece, and you snuck me, you, Ludo, and Val into the scene, and we were all playing with the gods and devils. You gave me a cowboy costume in that picture, and the hat slipped over my eyes in the picture because the hat you gave me while I modeled for you was too big and wouldn’t stay in place.” The light blinked sleepily, the fuel at an end, and the darkness surrounded them longer and longer. “Hey…when we get out of here, let’s find the others. Let’s go to Italy, down south, near the Mediterranean. There’ll be lots and lots of sunlight there…” The lamp blinked on one last time, then gave up its struggle. She held Toby close, closing her eyes…what good would sight do her now? “So…this is it. This is the edge of madness.” That precarious edge had no concept of time or thought, just pressing darkness and silence. She waited calmly for the madness to take hold, and was almost relieved when she heard the steel door unlock. The white-coats, no doubt, coming to pick up and dispose of two lifeless shells that remained. She felt (surely a hallucination, right? It was madness…white-coats wouldn’t bother being gentle…) strong arms lift and cradle her, and heard (another hallucination…how can the dead hear?) someone else do the same to Toby. Then the familiar smell (hallucinations came in all the senses, right?) of Kam’s vanilla and almond butter hand cream…

“Are they alive?” Val…Val’s voice nearby.

“Only just. They need medical care soon.” Elia.

“Then we need to hurry. Arte and the others won’t be able to distract the Administrator and black-coats for much longer before they implement lockdown.” Ludo…he was holding his boyfriend. He had done so often and she could almost see it. 

“Val, take the keys from me and open the other cells. Tell anyone who remains to hurry…and that we can’t afford to bring anyone who is too far gone.” Kam’s voice, the jingle of keys as they’re thrown, and the rapid patter of Val’s sneakers as she ran. Hallucination…all hallucination…she was going mad…

She finally opened her eyes. It was no hallucination. She was not going mad. In that moment, seeing Kam’s gentle paternal smile, she really wished she was. Hope was an infinitely worse delusion than madness could ever be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is part of my **Muses** world, a concept universe that ended up never making it to paper. Basically, it's a dystopian future Earth where certain children are born with the power to directly affect the thoughts and emotions of regular humans through a selected art (such as writing, drawing, singing, acting, and so on). When the first generation of these children learned about their powers and gathered to form an uprising, leading to a world war, a world government formed to find these children before the rebels did and used them against the leaders of the uprising to end the war. Afterwards, the world government stayed in power and formed conclaves on each continent where children who are identified as Muses are forced to live and die, using their powers at the direction of the government to create targeted propaganda to keep the various populations happy and docile. The key is that they are never alone: they're paired with partners very early and live with two other pairs, usually a compatible pair who use similar arts and an adult pair who've retired in order to be mentors. This never made it past the concept stage, but I obviously haven't forgotten it.


	4. The Three Magi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shai knew she was lucky to have the best Magithief as a brother and the best Magisword as a mentor, but she could do without them constantly being at each others' throats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: greater, fly, count, combination, trap, cutting, provide, beyond, post, elephant, brass, put, measure, noun, thus, specific, line, gone, charge, wonderful, swing

All it took was one specific line for everything that had gone wrong that day to be put in perfect perspective, and thus sending Sala well beyond her boiling point. This line only measured three words, two nouns and one verb, and had it been any other day would be innocuous at worst. But today…

“What did you just say, Shai?” Her expression alone told Shai that should she actually repeat her message she would be introduced rather intimately to Sala’s special brand of pain, a ritual she’d been subjected to more times than she could count. Being the sidekick partner of one of the most powerful Magiswords in the four realms had its perks, sure, but few knew just how temperamental Sala could be. She was rather known for her icy demeanor and cool efficiency in battle, coupled with stony courtesy when the occasion demanded. Only here, in the privacy of an inn (or a secluded camp, depending) did she ever display any passionate emotions, and typically it was anger. Shai had seen her at her best too, and she could truly be a wonderful friend and partner. She felt honored to be at her side, to be the one that Sala trusted enough to let her true emotions show. That enthusiasm was rather cooled in situations such as this though.

“I said ‘Daniel is here’, Sala.” Sala’s eyes flashed as she repeated her message, and Shai braced herself for the inevitable outburst. Surely enough, Sala swung at Shai not even a second later. Shai backed up enough to catch only the edge of Sala’s punch, and it was still powerful enough to make her fly directly into the frame of the bed, the brass post cutting into her back as she lay half on and half off, not really hurt but trying to catch her breath.

“Now, one last time, Shai…and this time you had better tell me that you sent Daniel on a wild goose chase to the other side of the continent.” The statement itself was a trap, so Shai simply didn’t answer. She was bound to be hit again, so why bother to lie or tell the truth when silence would provide the same outcome? So, instead, she braced herself for the inevitable blow that would come in a few seconds.

“She said that Daniel, the ‘partner’ you tried to strand in an abandoned fortress, is here to speak with you Sala.” From the now-open doorway Daniel, the most prominent Magithief in the four realms, looked at the scene with annoyance that flickered to anger when he saw Shai’s position. Sala immediately reacted, manifesting her sword and rushing towards him in one fluid movement. She was stopped in mid-charge as Daniel casually flicked his fingers at her and encased her in a translucent, unbreakable pink bubble. Leaving her to scream obscenities neither could hear, Daniel walked over to the bed and gently pulled Shai into a sitting position on the mattress, sitting next to her. She immediately cuddled into him, shaking slightly.

“I’m so glad you’re back, big brother. She really really tried to lose you this time.”

“It’ll take more than that to lose me, little sis. Have some faith.” Daniel was right; she should have more faith in him. He was the best Magithief hands down, and had yet to find a situation he couldn’t get out of. He was the one to get them away from Mati’s guild when they turned on the siblings after Daniel bested Mati in the challenged dungeon crawl. She’d been young then, only six to Daniel’s sixteen. Shortly after their escape they met Sala, a fledgling prodigy Magisword just beginning to make a name for herself. She had tried to push them away at first, insistent on being alone, but Daniel had a certain way of making himself unavoidably noticeable when the situation demanded it. She finally accepted that she’d just acquired two teammates…well, one teammate, really, as Shai was little better than an apprentice to both of them. Together they traveled the realms for four years, accepting quests and searching old ruins and deep jungles and even the bottom of an ocean, until there was not a person in any realm that did not know of them. The combination of Sala’s efficiency and Daniel’s calculating perception simply meant that there were no greater adventurers anywhere else, and so they became sought after.

What a lot of people didn’t know was the elephant that was not just in the room but that followed them wherever Daniel and Sala were together. In the past year both had started acting really weird towards each other, alternately getting along perfectly and resorting to stranding each other in odd places. Shai was merely caught in the middle of this, and it hurt worse than Sala’s explosive anger since she loved them both and would love to be a real family with them both of them. Current incidents didn’t portend well for that, though.

“Come on, Shai. Let’s get out of here. I won’t leave you to be abused by this demon anymore.” He stood, picking her up with him, but she squirmed until he let her go. She stepped back until she was perfectly between them, then crossed her arms over her chest in her best grown-up manner.

“Daniel, you need to apologize to Sala for deactivating her sword for three days. And Sala, you need to apologize to Daniel for tying him up in his sleep and leaving him in the dungeon in the fort.” Both Sala and Daniel glared at her, then glared at each other before looking away.

“He/she started it,” they said at the same time, though Sala went unheard in the bubble.

“I don’t care.” Shai walked to the door and closed it, then cast a barrier spell over it for good measure. No one would be able to get through there for a while. Then she walked over to the bubble and touched it; it dissipated instantly, leaving Sala sitting on the floor. “Now kiss and make up or kill each other here and now. That barrier will not release until one or the other has happened. Good night.” With that she teleported herself just outside the door, leaving the two trapped in the room. She was confident her spells would hold up. Unlike the other two, she was pure Magi, possibly the strongest one born since Magi Paluk, master of the Elemental Realms. She was still young, though, and needed the dampening effects both Sala and Daniel provided, otherwise her magic would consume and possess her, making her Rogue, and she would need to be killed.

Shai stayed at the door for a while, listening carefully. She didn’t really want them to kill each other, she just wanted them to get along, maybe even start a family. She could care for any little nieces or nephews they’d have. She heard their voices talking for some time, never raising in pitch enough for her to hear specifics. When the talking stopped and there were no sounds of combat, Shai finally walked away. She’d probably head to the baths, maybe do a little shopping in town. She knew from experience that they’d be kissing and making up for quite a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was trying to find a random name for my male lead over at the [Random Renamer](http://www.behindthename.com/random/), I kept clicking on reload to find a suitable name. I skipped 'Daniel' originally since I don't like using the names of people I already know, but it came up _three times in a row_! Obviously, my male lead was fated to be named Daniel.


	5. Negotiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faced with a harsh winter and a dwindling population, Mari realizes that she'll need help if she's going to keep the people of her faction alive. Martin is the only one she knows and is her only choice, but is it really the best choice?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: naturally, Louis, capital, talk, brought, ruler, principal, simplest, tone, Japanese, follow, garden, wolf, Martin, coast, thee, way, horse, oxygen, into, man

Mari leaned against one of the posts of the gazebo, tucking her arms around her for warmth. The Japanese garden had been carefully tended into a serene portrait of mid-winter beauty, the paths carefully swept clear of the snow that covered the grass and flowerbeds like a down comforter, the koi pond with a perfectly smooth layer of ice, slightly distorting the slowly moving fish below. Tonight’s sky was clear, letting the gibbous moon and abundant starlight highlight these features naturally. It was beautiful and peaceful, she had to admit, but she was shivering as the temperature dropped further and further in the long night, and the open gazebo provided no real cover from the light breeze that held the promise of more snow in the near future. Miserably, she slid down one of the posts and curled into a ball, knees to chest and head down, to take advantage of the only-slightly-more coverage the decorative lattice would provide. For the umpteenth time that night, she wondered exactly what she’d gotten herself into. Moreover, she wondered why she had let him choose the location for their clandestine meeting. That man had too much of a dramatic streak in him. She internally ranted at him for a while, not even noticing when she drifted off to sleep doing so.

“Mari…Mari, wake up now. This is no time for a nap. Mari…” The tone of the semi-aristocratic voice that was calling to her was just as gentle as the hand that shook her shoulder. Blinking slowly, she tried to put the man kneeling in front of her into better focus but was finding it difficult to do so. She could only make out deep blue-green eyes and a shock of unnaturally ice-blue hair.

“M…Martin? When…?” Her brain was having trouble forming any cohesive thoughts, and since it seemed like too much pointless effort she opted to close her eyes again and let sleep take over.

“No! Mari, wake up now!” A sharp slap to her cheek stung, but it did startle her enough to open her eyes again, if only to glare at him. He only replied with a relieved grin. “That’s better. Stand up now…let’s go someplace warmer.” He offered her a hand and she took it, pulling herself upright, only to fall completely against him as her legs buckled, refusing to hold her own weight.

“Nope…legs don’t work…”

“Well, I’m certainly not carrying you. Louis!” A large man with long blonde hair held in a braid appeared beside Martin like magic, and with absolutely no effort he picked Mari up bridal style, holding her close so she could warm up with his body heat. “That’s better. Let’s go inside.”

The garden was attached to the former governors’ mansion in the state’s capital. The opulence of both keenly attested to the decadence of the previous age. No governor lived here anymore, only the band of survivors who had long since staked their claim on this territory. The adults of the previous age had seriously fucked up, piling up conflict after conflict until the entire world was at war with each other. Though she’d seen that phrase in one of the scavenged school textbooks, they seemed to describe only a handful of nations fighting each other. The literal world war she lived through really did involve every nation and religion in existence. They killed each other with swords, guns, tanks, missiles, and biological agents. Along the way scientists developed new ways to slaughter one another: pressurized explosives that instantly sucked all the oxygen out of any given enclosed area, parasitic machines that burrowed into the brain and allowed another person to control the zombie-like human, mass subfrequency batteries that could instill fear, despair, absolutely apathy, and even blind rage. Then they stumbled upon anti-matter. Once successfully tested, one nation launched it at the major population center of another. The city and its’ people had not only been destroyed, they were obliterated completely, leaving hundreds of miles of dead earth spread out from the epicenter. Rather than recoil at the stark absolution of the weapon, other countries raced to build their own and retaliate. After three days of this, the launches stopped completely. There were too few left to continue.

With most of the worlds’ population gone, the remainder became lost. Many cities were gone, and those left standing still bore the scars of other weapons. The remaining populations sought each other out and finally met in a makeshift neutral zone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, formed by lashing together several aircraft carriers. The adults took stock very quickly. They were all dying in one way or another, ravaged by disease, poison, and the scars of other weapons. They would not survive. It was agreed they would return to North America, where there was still usable farmland and untainted seas. They spent one year in preparation, setting up farms and fisheries and laying in a large stock of supplies. Then, exactly one year after the meeting, everyone aged thirteen and up left for the Pacific meeting grounds, where they set off a small anti-matter device, leaving no more trace of their existence. In one fell swoop, the children inherited the earth.

The twelve-year-olds were the only ones who knew ahead of time what would happen, and so took leadership into their own hands. They tried to keep up the communes the adults set, but several of them wanted more power with less responsibility. That’s when the factions formed. A twelve-year-old would gather the children most loyal to them and declare themselves the ruler and start taking hold by force. Faced with this, the children found that the simplest solution was to band together in factions of their own. A small war would follow, as factions claimed the best clear, untainted territories. The fighting continued to this day, though it settled to something closer to tribal or gang warfare. Mari was actually the leader of one of the factions, located on a small island off the coast of what used to be the northeastern United States of America. Though they fared rather well, they were still quickly dwindling. Most of them were taken in very young, and there were only a handful at the minimum age of fertility. Mari, now sixteen, realized that they would need to ally themselves with another faction not only for the increase of people, but for trading and protection as well. Martin had been her friend in those early days, and she was able to get him to arrange a meeting with the elusive leader of his faction…hence why she was risking death by exposure in a frozen Japanese garden.

“Here we are! Welcome home, my lady.” They’d gone into the mansion and into a den with handsome furniture and a bright, warm fire in the fireplace. Louis gently eased her into one of the armchairs then walked to the door, standing guard. Martin gently draped a comforter around her back which she gratefully burrowed into, starting to warm up.

“Thank you, Martin,” she said with a smile.

“Ah…I live but to serve thee, dear lady.” He returned her grin, but only for a moment. “Now, can you tell me what brought you out this way?”

“Yes…I want to talk to your leader.” Her eyes followed him as he browsed a glass-fronted curio cabinet, opening it to look at the detail on an onyx wolf figurine. “How long will it take, do you think? I’d really like to get back to the island; they need me there.”

“Could be a while. He’s pretty suspicious and rather paranoid. Maybe you could tell me…?”

“My principle interest is to form an alliance for survival.”

“And you chose my faction?” Setting the wolf down, he picked up a jade horse. “Risky…he’s taken over other factions with force, even when they offered alliance. He never trusted any promises, only absolutes. Something for something. Do you even have anything to give him…some collateral to convince him that you will not go back on your word?”

“Yes…me.” He stopped at that, half-glancing back towards her. “He’d get me for whatever purpose he sees fit, so long as he will help take care of my faction. We can’t lose anyone else…we don’t want to disappear.”

“So…you’re saying you’ll sacrifice yourself so long as we ensure the survival of your faction?” He was looking directly at her now, jade horse back on the shelf.

“Yes.” She was starting to get annoyed…this was taking way too long. “So can I go ahead and speak with him?” She was startled as he crossed the floor to her chair in two steps and leaned over her, hands on the arms of the chair and his face inches from hers, trapping her. He was smiling, but not one like before. This was preditorial, eyes alight with a bestial hunger.

“You just did.”


	6. Reading Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexi had always been able to see music as it floated in the air, could push and pull and stretch until new music was created. She never thought that she'd need to watch the spaces between the music as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: present, Alice, cookies, earth, wide, fall, railroad, sad, flower, bow, ago, what, warn, continued, course, limited, given, grass, popular, idea, love, behind, finger, cat, given, Dad, protection, plant, score, into, properly, mood, explore, orbit, duty, shout, rod, me, tune, smallest, method, soap
> 
> This was written over two days, so I ended up using two word lists in this story.

                _“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked._

_“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here.  I’m mad.  You’re mad.”_

_\-- Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol_

Lexi could see music. Not in the sense that one could properly see music, reading a score and taking a bow to a violin and producing a tune. Lexi could see the notes as they flew through the air, could hook a finger onto a C# and pull it into an F and a G# to make a chord, stretch and tug a Bb until it turned into a D, scoop a whole handful of bars and mash them into a cacophony. Her mum had watched her as she spent the hours weaving music in mid-air, playing the piano to give her simple melodies that she could concoct symphonies for their enjoyment. They lived in their own world most of the time. Mum was teacher, confidant, playmate, and nurturer all in one. Lexi could not imagine life any other way.

This comfortable and closeted existence ended the day mum fought Mezzo. The creature appeared in between the notes and had borne down immediately upon Lexi. Her mum reacted so quickly, knocking over the piano bench to thrust Lexi behind her for protection. With a hideous scream in a dual F#/G it thrust its’ piano-wire fingers directly into mum’s chest. She screamed in agony but reached up to clasp it closer, drawing it in further and further as she collapsed. By the time she’d completed her fall Mezzo had disappeared into mum and she no longer moved. She was buried in the earth a few days later. Lexi was sad of course and she was allowed to place the first flower onto her casket. A tall, thin man in a black cassock spoke at length in a droning bass C# and then men with shovels came and covered the hole in the ground. A matronly lady picked her up afterwards, whispering comforting phrases in the softest pianissimo. They went to her home and she was set down in the parlour, given a tiny plate of finger sandwiches, some miniscule cookies, and a silk-wrapped present before being left to her own devices. Lexi remained for a time until she found she was no longer in the mood to be lost in the jungle of trousered, skirted, and nyloned legs, at which time she abandoned her food, tucked the folded silk securely into her sash, and left the house behind. Instead of returning to mum’s grave she set instead for the faerie-tree, an ancient oak with massive limbs, numerous hollows, and endless sprigs of mistletoe. Her special place was on the third branch up, perhaps ten feet above the ground, a wide and comfortable seat that had formed naturally over the centuries and was perfect for knitting together the strands of birdsong and windsong while taking conduction from an endless sea of waving grass. Though she looked at it, Lexi never came closer than gently brushing the gingham ribbon that tied it closed to opening the silk package. Instead she merely stared at it for hours until the crickets added their early-evening instruments to the ambiance and a shout from the direction of the house galvanized her to climb down and return.

At the dawn of the next day she was introduced to a stranger. It was a tall man with a full mustache but little hair on his head who wore a pinstriped suit with a grey tie and a permanent glare, one eye magnified above the other through the glass of a monocle. He called himself ‘Father’ and, in a deep chord of F#m7 informed her that it would now be her duty to receive instruction in the function and management of a household, so that one day he might be able to marry her off to some minor noble’s son to increase his standing in the world. From there she was handed off to a lady with a pinched, squinty face that smelled of cabbage and gave instruction in a piercing Db. If Lexi made even the smallest error her back would be lashed with a thin whippy rod in a rhythm of eighth note triplets: _whack-whack-whack!_ Should she speak out of turn, especially with venom or criticism, she would be hauled to the washroom, sat on a metal bucket, immobilized with a tight belt, and had her mouth filled with a soap cake to clean out her words and her mind. She tried once to tell Father these harsh methods she was subjected to. He spoke to Cabbage, and then she was taken away, tied onto the bucket, and subjected to a triplet of triplet-lashes. Afterwards she was untied but left locked in the washroom for the rest of the day.

With limited mobility and little food, Lexi had little choice but to dwell on the days when it was merely she and mum. Those days, always filled with sunlight and music and love, seemed so long ago to her. In reminisce she idly loosed thin threads of music in the room: light percussive taps to the bucket, the _shhh-shhh_ scrapes of the washboard, the eerie whine of a forgotten crystal tumbler buried behind cleaning supplies. Though not much, it enabled her to piece together the barest patch of music. As she continued to work with it over the day, she thought often of that thing that had come from between the notes. She had seen it…it was no lie. Mum had seen it too. When the policeman, a man with kind creases next to his eyes who spoke in a soothing paternal BbM, asked her what happened to mum she told him all about Mezzo, the creature with the piano-wire fingers, who had disappeared into mum. Later that day she’d talked to a doctor with a starched white coat whose voice was a flat C drone who explained to her that mum had died from a myocardial infarction, not an imaginary creature with piano-wire fingers. When she had insisted, she’d been fed a tonic which made her drowsy and caused her to sleep for the next day. No one believed her as she tried to warn them, and after a time she simply gave up the idea that she could convince anyone.

After a time she retrieved the silk-wrapped package she’d been given when they buried mum. She always kept it near, though she’d had to become cleverer in order to hide it from Father and Cabbage. With little else to do at the moment, she finally tugged on the gingham ribbon to unbind it. The silk fell smoothly away to reveal a miniature music box. It was no larger than the palm of her hand, and the face of it showed the sun and all the planets surrounding it. The key was hidden beneath a cleverly concealed catch, and when wound it played the Star Waltz, a small song that she’d woven on the night of the comet which became popular between her and mum and was played at least once a day. The planets on the face of the music box moved in orbit around the sun to the rhythm of the waltz, and she added her own stars as tears dropped onto the face, the poignant memories almost unbearable.

The music clicked to an abrupt halt after a time, and she saw that the planets had come into alignment on the face. Wiping her tears away she reached for the key to wind it again, just to hear it one last time, when she felt something peculiar in the room with her. She hastily shoved the loose phrases of music that had filled the room off to either side in a jumble and came face to face with another creature. Unlike Mezzo, this one had the softer features of a Lullaby and the voice was a euphonic concoction of wooden flutes and a mother’s voice.

“Thank you, Lexi. I have been waiting for ages to see you.”

“What…me? But I have not been alive for ages, only ten years.”

“You exist in the music too, as did your mother. I despaired that I would ever be able to reach either of you again.”

“But you have only reached me. Mum is…” She stopped, tears flowing again, and tried to brush them away. Lullaby knelt in front of her, taking away the tears with hands that smelled of baking bread and bow rosin. 

“Melody ran from me long ago. She was being pursued by Nocturne, who wished to capture her for his very own. She came to this realm, hidden in the spaces between the sounds, and I let her remain, believing her to be safe. Mezzo found her, though, and if Mezzo found you then Nocturne knows where you are as well. I believe it is no longer safe to remain. I would like that you come with me.”

“But…why did this Nocturne want mum? Why does he want me? I am nothing so special.”

“You are his child. You are Solstice Lexicon, the keeper of all the phrases that make the in-between. And I will make sure he does not have you if you come with me. I will love you, and I will keep you safe.” Lexi pondered this for a moment.

“If I go with you, Nocturne will not be able to reach me? What about Father and Cabbage?”

“They will not even remember.”

“Then I go with you.” The decision was as easy as taking Lullaby’s hand and walking with her into the hollows of music she’d created. The stone flooring of the washroom gave way to verdant plants, and then a stream of sunlight highlighted a set of railroad tracks with a tinkling chime. Far in the distance she made out a large city glowing with the colors of a CM chord, and crowning it was a castle proclaiming itself boldly with rhapsodic choirs. This was a world that Lexi understood, one where she belonged, and she could not wait to explore it, dangers and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing chord notation in MS Word sucks. Trying to write chord notation in this editor sucks worse. So please forgive the strangeness of the notations in this story. And if you don't read musical notation, I'm really sorry about the weirdness of this piece in general...I'm a closet musician, so this does make sense to me, but I don't know that it would to anyone else.


	7. What My Story Will Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having little to do leads Angie to speculate about all the crazy events in her life that led up to that particular moment. What kind of story would that make?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: largest, good, scene, journey, heavy, story, surrounded, fear, warn, government, sentence, fully, pool, rod, location, among, every, porch, independent, introduced, rays

Angie often wondered what her story would read like, should she ever get the gumption to put pen to paper and write it all down. She knew that she had been through a lot and that it would perhaps be a story worth reading, should anyone be left alive to read it. It certainly was something to ponder, especially since she was more or less confined to the safehouse for a while. The tale certainly didn’t lack for genre…the trouble would be choosing among them.

Action? It was the largest genre she could think of, but that wasn’t always a good thing. Which part of this story would she pen? Her government kidnapping her and sending her to Iraq, where she ended up fighting both soldiers and corrupt bureaucrats…there was no lacking for detail, but the plot might get too heavy at times. How about the aftermath, when she’d been sent to a blacklist military base in the middle of nowhere, accepting it in lieu of serving a sentence at Gitmo with her husband and best friend. The Gaia Virus had started there…she’d even met the Patient Zero, talked to him and touched him hours before he killed himself, unleashing the virus on a host of unsuspecting international members of governments, businesses, and military. She was one of the chosen who survived, along with Taylor and Psy. Essentially, it went awry and produced zombies. But so many books used that theme…nearly every one within the past ten years or so. What would be the point other than to saturate the market further?

Military espionage? That theme hit rather close to the truth. The whole reason she was sent to Iraq was her accidental eavesdropping on a Colonel and a Senator. They talked about an ‘experiment’ on a certain battalion. That scared her, and afterwards she went to the CO on the base and talked with him about it. That same night a black-ops team invaded her house, terrorized her housemate, drugged her, and she found herself on a military hop to Iraq. She became an odd and rather unwilling independent contractor at an outpost, tasked with ferreting out a conspiracy she unwittingly stumbled into. The next few scenes would make an excellent Michael Bay movie, as she watched the soldiers at the outpost go into a mass psychotic rage and kill each other. She was rescued by Psy and his impressive tracking skills, and they took a long journey across the desert to the nearest town which was under the same psychotic rage. That village was one she’d never forget. Soldiers, insurgents, and civilians…men, women, and children…no one was spared the effects of the rage. The lone survivor was an American Corporal who’d had dysentery, and therefore couldn’t keep anything in his system, including the rage-inducing drug. She’d arrived just in time to watch him kill his best friend, the same one who’d been the best man at their wedding. Her husband, Ty, had survived that day, though she wondered if it was a blessing. At any rate, the last part of that story was cliché modern espionage: arrive at the consulate, discover incriminating files that implicate a Senator, watch him shoot the two closest men in her life, get hands on a gun at the last second and kill the Senator. Then, of course, the deus ex machina that ensures that said heroes are taken care of by ‘killing’ them for the outside world and instead secreting them away until they’re needed for a sequel.

Medical thriller? Nah…that went hand in hand with the zombies.

Survival? Maybe. After the Gaia Virus outbreak, surviving was all they’d done. With well over 7/8 of the human population dead and reanimated or simply dead, other humans were a bit scarse. They’d met a few, sure, and they weren’t all crazy cannibal rednecks and opportunistic mercenaries. There was the young priest holding his own in a tiny chapel, protecting the children that had come there after their parents had died. He used nothing but a heavy steel rod that had come from the encircling rays of the large cross behind the pulpit, and still prayed for every zombie he killed. Later, a maximum security prison where the inmates who survived ran a small community. Surprisingly, the prisoners were interested only in cooperation, not in any of the activities that landed them there in the first place. Those who slipped back to their old ways were executed on the spot. They had an ideal location and were fully stocked for years, perhaps decades, but they still moved along after a couple of day’s rest. It would certainly make for an interesting slice-of-life novel.

Comedy? No…there hadn’t been much to laugh at in quite some time.

Romance? That had some potential as well. She, Ty, and Psy made up the sides of a rather unstable triangle, and yet somehow they managed to make it work. She’d known Psy since kindergarten, a rather unusual feat since they were both military brats with the usual upheaval every 3 to 5 years. They learned the secrets of hacking together (a large part of how they remained together as they grew up, since they were not afraid to alter their fathers’ orders) as well as the secrets of growing up. Their first time had been with each other when they were 14. Though they remained close, neither ever talked about making their relationship permanent. Then she’d been introduced to Ty, an up-and-coming Corporal at the base where their fathers had retired. She wasn’t certain that it was love at first sight, but it wasn’t long before she realized that what they had together was good. They’d arranged a quick marriage when he got his orders for Iraq, and she stayed behind as a dutiful Army wife. Fast forward two years, and she was dealing with an unstable and broken man and a best friend who still loved her deeply and was becoming attracted to his erstwhile rival as well. The crisis with the Gaia Virus forced them to pool all their resources…physical, mental, and emotional…and try to learn to survive in this new world. Now she was surrounded by them constantly and she still couldn’t think of a single objection to their balancing act of a relationship.

Angie moved out to the porch of the safehouse, looking at the landscape in which the setting sun touched the autumn leaves and set them ablaze in red, gold, and orange. Winter would arrive sooner than any of them were comfortable with, and though the house was very secure and the supplies plentiful she felt the familiar brush of fear threatening to overwhelm her once again. She wasn’t certain why, but she had this aching feeling that something was bound to go wrong, something catastrophic. As usual, tears escaped despite her best effort to hold them in, followed by wracking sobs she couldn’t even pretend to stop. In an instant, both Ty and Psy were there, one on either side, doing their best to calm her down. No matter how often she tried to warn them about this precognitive feeling, they merely said it was likely the result of her current condition. She was heavily pregnant; thanks to some scavenged fertility drugs, she was pregnant with triplets. There was a good possibility that they were both fathers from this. The safehouse they stayed in was a small community in itself, and thankfully had a midwife.

She wondered as they sat her on the bed, pillows behind her back to keep her upright, if this hypothetical story could ever have a happy ending. Real life never seemed to, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another one of my concept universes. I've written a little on it, but nothing more than the background summaries that are in this story already.


	8. Equalizers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Competing to become the realm's Champion is the highest holy honor, given to the most devout disciples. This year, the church has allowed a competitor who has nothing to do with the church or their faith, and the foremost disciple isn't happy with that. The new competitor is determined to win at any cost, though...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (FWFL) Word List: Bignoniaceous, Sanctifier, Uncourtly, Whee, Pretravel, Parleyed, Common, Bleakish, Investigation, Unstable, Now, Gourmet, Dayspring, Rendible, Gateau, Salvable, Maronite, Chemosphere, Straightener, Endorser, Non-institution, Soundproofing, Submedial, Tosh, Autolyzed, Thorwaldson, Unsilly, Outglared, Descend, Paybox, Acquisitive, Nenhai, Accommodative, Underterrestrial, Unawareness, Petrolina, Unmountable, Pseudoamateurish, Coindident, Gluttonously, Eudemonism, Postcubital, Homemaking, Rhyme, Wulfenite, Memoralizer, pericardial

Jacaranda…a tree with lavender flowers, belonging to the bignoniaceous family. In this particular case, it became the sanctifier necessary to make Kel the undisputed Champion, representer of the realm of Stone. There was only one problem with this particular quest: Kamala, the absolutely uncourtly street urchin, had arrived a mere minute before him and was up among the branches, collecting handfuls of the blossoms and stuffing them into a grubby pouch.

“Whee!” Having noticed him, she enthusiastically waved and recklessly leapt from her perch with not so much as a thought to pretravel arrangements, and had he not caught her she surely would have broken either her neck or his spine. He’d parlayed with her about this several times over the course of their journey, trying to get her to understand that he was destined to be Champion so she would go home…or at least stay out of his way. If anything, the talks had the opposite effect and her popping up underfoot at inopportune moments was distressingly common. Only her cheerful, friendly attitude and absolute adorableness tempered the situation from outright bleak to merely bleakish.

“Kamala, how did you find this place so quickly when it took me a week of investigation?” Truth told, he thought her to be too unstable to properly search for answers and had simply assumed that she followed him, profiting from his meticulous and methodical searches.

“Kal…can you put me down now? While you’re at it, please stop looking at me like I’m a five-course gourmet dinner.” He dropped her quickly, not even realizing that he’d been admiring her bluesteel hair and dayspring silver eyes. He also noticed now just how tiny she was; she seemed so rendible, like he could tear her apart with even his mediocre strength. Small, sweet, and strikingly colored, like the gateau his mother made for him as a child…

“I’m staring at you because now I have to see if anything remains salvable from the tree you’ve happily mutilated,” he retorted, desperately trying to save face. Briefly, he wondered if he could become a Maronite in the realm of Earth, far far away from this girl and the infinite complications that came with her. Going to the realm of Sky and abandoning her in the chemosphere had a certain appeal to it, as well…

“There’s nothing wrong, other than your hair desperately needing a straightener,” she retorted, making a stab at his hair…well, she had a point. “Honestly, why are you angry at me when I don’t need an endorser for my work? The challenge went non-institutional because the church was losing too many of their precious sacrificial lambs to it. And before you say ‘how did you know about that’, you should tell the church elders that they need better soundproofing in their ‘secret’ chamber.”

“So you found the submedial passage through the church…you know I have to tell them this and that you’ll be executed.” 

“Tosh…you won’t tell,” she said, dismissively flicking her fingers. “Otherwise I’ll tell them how the last Holy Herb ‘autolyzed’ with your ‘assistance’.” 

“And I could summon Thorwaldson…you’d make a lovely fountain sculpture.” He was past the point of annoyance with this demon who contrived to extend his unsely existence. It seemed that she was, too, for they squared off to make the other back down, and he was rather surprised when he actually outglared her. He felt his anger slowly descend when she took a step back, looking down and away.

“Fine…what do you want me to do…I’m too poor to contribute to the church paybox and I’m definitely not penitent about my actions.” His mind immediately snapped on a rather acquisitive and perverted answer which he promptly and ruthlessly shoved aside. The second involved encasing her in lead and depositing her in the Nenhai Sea, but he also pushed that idea aside.

“Well, seeing as you’re in such an accommodative mood right now, how about you lead me through your ‘home’ so we can cut a few days off our trip?”

“You want to go through the Underterrestial Complex?” she squeaked, going pale at the suggestion. “I knew you were deluded before, but I didn’t expect this level of unawareness from you.” He wondered what he was missing…he always figured that the Underterrestial Complex would be rather safe, as it was only the broken city of Petrolina, sunk after a vicious, earth-splitting earthquake a few hundred years ago. Sure, it would make any pictures or decorations completely unmountable, but outright danger?

“I see no reason not to…surely, whatever frightens you is merely your lies laying in your quick createdness in order to get out of your debt. Now drop this pseudoamateurish act and start walking.”

She did, and they were soon at a blank patch of stone that wasn’t too far from the tree, which he found wryly coincident. The stone revealed a dark passage, and it was in this passage they walked for countless days, eating gluttonously when given the chance and sleeping heavily when exhaustion overtook them. When the silence became too much, they talked…he was surprised that the girl was deeply indoctrinated into the fringe of eudemonism, which had the foundation for strong morals even if it was heretical to the church. He also asked about the myriad of postcubital scars on left arm, the jagged pink lines going from shoulder to run under the cubital sleeve, but she never elaborated.

After a long series of meals and naps (he couldn’t call them days, since night or day didn’t matter in this underground world), they came into a section which showed recent attempts of homemaking among broken slabs and columns of white marble and granite. Within a few hundred yards of the invisible perimeter of this city, Kamala came upon a heavy doorway and whispered a rhyme to it. A sigil made of wulfenite shone brightly for a moment, then the door swung open just enough to admit the two of them before slamming closed once again. Before he could even think to react, he was captured by numerous hands, bound tightly, and secured to a column made of bone by which a memorializer began a sonorous chant in a dead language.

“I’m truly sorry, Kel,” said Kamala with a sob in her voice, even as she pushed a sharp dagger straight through his pericardial walls, “…but I really did try to warn you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! This was my first attempt at doing 50 words, and I completely underestimated it. Spent a lot of time with an unabridged dictionary and a slang dictionary open in my browser, and (obviously) I really had to reach for some of these sentences. I really didn't intend for it to turn out so dark, either...goes to show how your writing can really run away with you sometimes.


	9. Evidence and Bonus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a team of 'information specialists', anything extra they can walk out with is a nice bonus to split between them. This mission's bonus is a little bit more difficult to split among three people, though...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: Refused, Carlos, Lips, Topic, Plain, Born, Teach, Main, Produce, Evidence, Supper, Russian, Mine, Base, Noted, Pennsylvania, Knife, Soon, Case, Root, percent

“No…I found it, so it’s rightfully mine, sabe?”

“Nyet…you would not have made it out of there alive if I had not stepped in. I deserve the better share.”

Momiji, known to her two friends as ‘Maple’, listened to their current argument from the worn couch as she idly sharpened her knife with a whetstone. It wasn’t the first they had over the spoils of a successful job, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The fact that they’d gotten anything at all for themselves meant that it had been a better job than usual. More often than not, the bulk of physical and digital material went directly to The Shop, their handlers. 

Of course they weren’t just any coworkers, just as this was no nine-to-five company. The Shop cultivated special teams for a select variety of clients. Her team specialized in ‘exfiltration of produce’…which made them sound like a team of farmers’ market commandos. In reality, they were more or less thieves. Often they were hired to procure evidence from certain places, either for use or destruction as the clients demanded. Neither case really mattered to them. They got the goods and were given thirty percent of the client’s fee, which usually meant a few ten-thousand or so. It at least kept them and their needs satisfied.

Not that they ever really asked for much. They were currently living in the basement of one of The Shop’s security firms in northern Pennsylvania. This served as both their home and their base of operations. It was well-hidden, but even if someone found it they would find only a rather plain studio ‘apartment’ that could have belonged to any three college roommates in the world. They were all rather far from normal themselves, though. Carlos was a weedy and gangly Hispanic of uncertain descent. He served as a driver, decoy, and infiltrator, the three most important tasks if they wanted it to be a clean mission. Sasha was a lithe Russian with broad shoulders whose’ father had defected from the KGB at the tail end of the Cold War. He was their muscle and marksman, as well as their supplier for arms and paramilitary gear. Maple had been born in a safe room in a corporate office during one of The Shop’s missions, a rare wetworks op that required everyone in a certain area to die. When the team came upon the safe room, her mother had already bled out and she would have soon followed. Soba, the medic for that particular team, couldn’t find the will to kill a newborn and she had convinced the rest of them to take the child back with them. So, in a way, Maple had also been one of the spoils of a successful mission.

Snapping out of her reminiscence, Maple noticed that Carlos and Sasha were still on the same topic of their argument. Sighing, she stood and sheathed her knife, determined to get at the root of the problem so she could get some peace and quiet. In two short strides she was at the table and deftly picked up the bundle that was the source of their debate.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“Ending this argument. If you two can’t decide, then neither one of you will keep it.” 

“Please…it was just a friendly chat. You can’t take it away just because of that.” Sasha was actually whining, lips pulled into a petulant pout.

“Your argument is noted and dismissed. Now, how about the two of you go start supper? It’s been a long day.” With both of them grumbling multi-lingual curses that she refused to acknowledge, they slunk off to the kitchen area and began to pull together a meal. Maple went back to the couch and reclined back on it before gingerly peeling back the blanket she held to reveal a baby boy.

Carlos found him in the basement of the bio-research lab that had been their latest hit. A high-class lawyer who was building his portfolio for a future career in politics had some suspicions of illegal research being performed there, but no solid evidence. As it turned out, their main line of income was an experimental in-vitero technique that allowed for manually turning genes on and off at different stages of the fetal growth cycle. Custom-made babies for all the rich couples. Their dirty little secret was the test batches they used to ensure the right genes were being flipped. They’d bring in homeless or indigent pregnant women, gave them a place to stay while they turned things on and off with their baby, then took the baby when it was born. Often they let the mothers go, especially if they were so strung-out that no one would believe their stories. Sometimes they’d kill the mothers, especially if a birth went badly, harvest her eggs and dispose of the evidenced. The babies were disposed of as well once they’d outlived their usefulness or didn’t turn out the way they wanted. 

Carlos had gotten to the basement first, after Maple bypassed the security protocols that barricaded the door. The video he took was gruesome…no women, but a pile of infants lay heaped in a biohazard bin next to an incinerator, obviously waiting for disposal. Near the top of the mound one moved, and Carlos didn’t think twice about grabbing a nearby sheet and wrapping the still-living one inside of it. He took just a little too long, though, and a ‘janitor’s’ shout immediately summoned a guard who raised an alarm. Maple succeeded in stopping the general alarm, but the guards in the basement were alerted and converged. Since he had his hands full, Carlos couldn’t defend himself and would have died if Sasha hadn’t arrived, flattening two guards with a metal door and throwing a smoke bomb into the rest, which knocked all of them out for a while. The getaway was far cleaner than the mission itself and the evidence was happily turned over to the client. She hoped the lawyer could nail their collective asses to the wall. Someone had to teach them a long-overdue lesson in medical ethics.

“But, in the meantime, looks like you’re stuck with us,” she murmured to the boy, who fussed a bit then snuggled closer to her body heat. Perhaps it was time for a vacation of their own. Take some time off to really turn their team into a family. It was certainly a nice thought.


	10. The Union

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You ever have one of those days where you just want to disappear? Yeah...that's kinda my luck lately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: Tired, Eight, Yes, Nearby, Tonight, Mean, Discussion, Careful, Complete, Union, Tube, Putting, I’ll, Learn,  
> Conversation, Done, Don’t, Hang, Stage, Read, into

“Ciri, please don’t walk away from this. You and I need to have a sincere discussion about this, and you know as well as I do that putting it off will only make it worse.”

“No, Adrian…I’m done. I just got off of an eight-hour shift after a full night of hunting, and I’m tired as hell. This ‘conversation’ is not happening tonight.” I shove past him before he can remark or retaliate and I’m in the lift tube and three floors up before he can even turn around, and that gives me plenty of time to make it to my quarters and lock the door before he can catch up. Once in, I simply collapse on the bed, still in my work clothes, too exhausted to remain upright anymore and too agitated to fall asleep. Really, between Adrian and the Elder Council, I doubt I’ll be sleeping much in the days to come.

A union. A pairing of a man and a woman by the Council which the Clairvoyant has deemed necessary for some galaxy-shattering event that might possibly occur in the future. There hadn’t been an arranged Union on the planetside colony ship in over fifty years, so it came as a complete shock when the Council spokesrobot announced it over the intercom of the ship. None were more shocked than I was, considering they didn’t even give me the option to learn this news in private. Since then Adrian has been trying desperately to get me alone and I’ve been seriously debating if it wouldn’t just be far easier to hang myself from one of the exposed girders in the shuttle launch bay.

Nah. Too much effort, not enough will. Story of my damn life.

“Ciri!” Great. He caught up.

“Yes?”

“Let me in.”

“No.”

“I’ve got dinner…” Ooh…that was simply mean. I hadn’t had a chance to eat since the meal I bolted down between hunting and my job in the launch bay. I finally manage to grumble some sort of reply while I grope for the nearby touch panel to open the door. The smell of food hits me and makes my stomach growl loudly. I’m certain he heard it, but instead of commenting or laughing he set the tray on my table and approached the bed with careful steps until he was right beside me.

“Thanks for the food.”

“Thank you for letting me in.”

“Don’t read too much into it.” With some effort I push myself into a sitting position. He promptly sits beside me to put my head on his shoulder…and it feels a hell of a lot better than it should.

“What happens now?”

“At this stage? No clue.”

“…Should we give it a try?”

“…Why not?”


	11. Welcomed by the Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brothers Richard and Lincoln find their lives changed after the arrival of the mysterious lights dancing in the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: Share, Crew, Highest, Lincoln, Sight, There, Mysterious, Possible, Richard, Attached, Pet, Cannot, Pen, Marking, Later, Solution, Test, Body, Fully, Climate, stream

The mysterious lights danced for close to an hour, marking the night sky with pinpoints, ribbons, and arcs that stayed in sight of hundreds of people before fully disappearing into inky black once again. Richard and Lincoln were among those hundreds, the younger Lincoln grasping his older brothers’ hand tightly through the whole show and relaxing only when they faded away. Once they were gone the two boys ran towards their home as they were already exceptionally late to begin with, but instead of chattering excitedly about the unexpected show they were silent.

Later that night, long after they were tucked in and even after their parents were asleep, Lincoln crept into Richard’s bedroom and woke him up with a mute appeal in his eyes. Richard knew just how attached his little brother was to him, so it was not a problem to share his bed. What was unusual was that Lincoln’s body trembled excessively as if he were freezing, though his skin was actually rather warm. Their parents noticed this in the morning and Lincoln was promptly taken to their doctor for examination.

The doctor performed test after test on Lincoln, then sent him to more doctors for more tests. In the end, all the doctors could say was, “We cannot find a problem, so there is no solution.” After every possible avenue was explored they finally returned home, dispirited and dejected. In desperation, their parents tried some things of their own. They got a pet, but Lincoln wasn’t lonely. They went on holiday for a change in climate, but it didn’t affect him at all. In the end, they had nothing and simply returned home and began waiting for Lincoln to die.

Richard knew those mysterious lights had something to do with it, but his parents didn’t believe him at all. So, late one night, Richard found a pen and some paper and wrote a note to his sleeping parents, telling them that he was going to take Lincoln and fix him. They snuck outside and found the stream they’d been playing near when the lights first showed up. From there they followed it upstream and reached the highest point in their small village. Not having planned this far ahead, Richard thought for a while and then simply yelled as loud as he could to the stars, telling the lights to come back and fix his brother. Seconds passed, then minutes, as nothing happened. Richard sat next to Lincoln, holding his sleeping brother close, and as the minutes became hours he too fell asleep.

He awoke later to a strange sight. He was in a place like a hospital, if the hospital were in one of those space-faring sci-fi stories. An uncurtained window showed stars…not above, but among! The door opened as he was trying to process this, and Lincoln came in with a boy about Richard’s age with light hair and sharp eyes. He didn’t smile and spoke only seven words:

“I’m Peter. Welcome to my crew.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't deny that my writing gets dark and weird sometimes, but I think this is the first time I'd even considered Peter Pan in space.


	12. The Third Purge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seraph and Vati muse as they watch the world burn, taking humanity with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: Stream, Smoke, Cream, Promised, Dance, Complex, Graph, Cutting, Said, Thing, Rock, Being, Difference, When, Hurt, Now, Silk, Farther, Roman, Italy, ordinary

Seraph looked down on the city from the roof of Nieva, four towers flanking her position on each corner like a modern-day basilica. Smoke spiraled upward from a thousand raging fires and she allowed her tears to stream freely down her cheeks, as if the counterpoint of it could somehow magically restore the balance which had been lost. It would make absolutely no difference in this situation, she knew, and yet she could not help but to hold out the thinnest shred of hope, no matter how foolish it seemed. Italy burned, and she was unable to help.

This had been her home in a time nearly forgotten, a time before the Vatican and Catholic superiority, a time before the sweeping spread of the Roman Empire, farther and farther back in time until Italy was nothing more than a few sparsely populated pockets of humanity, the fledglings that had just discovered the stability of agriculture and livestock and would eventually shape the way of life for tens of thousands of years to come. Hers had been an ordinary commune just as she had been an ordinary girl. If she concentrated hard enough, she could still find that tiny plot of earth even in this vastly different landscape. Empires came and went, but she and the earth remembered. That did not change the fact that such change still hurt deeply, even now.

“Sera…I thought I would find you here.” The smooth masculine voice was calm, tinted with an ever-present sadness at the edges. Vati was her friend, her lover, and the only one left that came from a time even earlier than hers. He placed a warm steadying hand at the small of her back as he stepped beside her at the ledge. She felt the fine silk of the shirt he wore on her bare arm and found his immaculate attention to fashionable detail, even in the midst of this crisis, oddly comforting.

“Vati…He said that we could protect them. He promised. When did He change His mind?”

“You know how complex this situation is, Sera. Things couldn’t stay as they always were. You were a rock to these people, and look at what they did with the stability you help to cultivate. They turned against the land, turned against each other, and finally turned against you.” His hand moved from her back to deliberately trace long pink lines against her otherwise cream-colored skin, the lasting remnants of humanity’s last physical encounter with her.

“But…how does He know they can’t be saved? How can He be certain that cutting away the last traces of humanity is the right thing to do?”

“He is a being far older and far more removed than we are. We have to trust Him, just like we have before.” The purges were actually nothing new to this world. Vati came from the time of the first purge, when Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon shared the ice-locked planet between them. She was of the second purge, the catalyst that allowed humans to band together in larger and larger communities for growth and survival. He had sent a Herald of Light to each of them just before the purges began in earnest, always saving at least one example of the time about to be lost. Vati’s people called them Gaia and Sky-Father. Seraph’s had called them Lightning and Sol. In this day there were many other names, but everyone recognized the universal concepts of Angels and God. She wasn’t entirely certain about His divinity, much less her own, but He had been the one watching this tiny marble of water and fire and soil for aeons uncounted, guiding its’ development along some unseen celestial graph. He’d allowed humanity to continue beyond the first two purges, entrusting them to the two remnants of the previous civilization. This time, this third purge, He had spared no one. He did not intend for humanity to survive upon their continued follies.

“Vati…I’m so tired of this dance with Him,” she quietly admitted, leaning into him as he pulled her close. “I’m tired of the ambiguity, of being led on a string to music I can’t hear and don’t know. I just want it to end.”

“I know, Sera. Maybe that’s part of His plan, too. Maybe it’s finally time for us to rest.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe.” She wiped her tears away with one hand, turning her back on the burning landscape. “He’ll want to see us soon. We’d better go.” Holding each other close, Seraph and Vati looked up into the sky at a place only they could see and disappeared into twin flashes of light, leaving the burning earth far behind.


	13. The Orphans of the Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Sid lived on the streets in Heliotrope, a supposed paradise, the 'perfect city' example for the rest of the new colonies. Given the chance to leave, to go somewhere they might have a chance for a better life, they and their gang took it. Opportunities aren't always as they seem, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (FWFL) Word List: peopler, Posidonius, Weed, Burly, Sclerotic, Initialer, Unprospered, Immaterialized, Pedophilic, Nicolaus, Isohyetal, Demurral, Greenfield, Elisha, Unpained, Unadmonished, Nonresonant, Zervanite, Pantechnicon, Absecon, Uncoaxing, Disprize, Codeless, Doggish, Krebs, Hypogeous, Iseult, Moutonned, Tugless, Prediscoverer, Resituated, Zod, Scouring, Hindermost, Epithalamion, Greenhouse, Subpostscript, Revolvingly, Prepeusing, Kohen, Rosemarie, Sumer, Escallonia, Guaira, Nonequalizing, Aerography, Eliphaz, Haltere, Postrostral, gynaecothoenas

Emma had at one time been excited and ecstatic to be pulled as a peopler for the Q.E. 284 off-world colony. She, her friend Posidonius, and the others of their little gang really had nothing going for them until that moment. They were orphans, street kids, a weed that had sunk itself deep into the garden bed of Heliotrope and stubbornly refused to be eradicated. At first they thought they’d been rounded up by the Cleaners to be ‘processed’, i.e. killed, and Sid had pushed her behind himself, looking menacing with an unusually burly frame for an eleven-year-old boy. Instead of being gassed, though, an older man who walked stiffly from sclerotic legs approached them. He spoke convincingly of space and the wonders and mysteries therein and how they could be among the first for this new project, the initialers of a new era of exploration and colonization. They could be the ones to lay claim of the unprospered unknown and would be able to leave behind this world which had no use for children such as they.

They bought it, hook, line, and sinker, and they boarded the next Q.E. shuttle outbound for an easy instantaneous hop…until they and everyone else on board immaterialized as the Q.E. signature snapped in half. She thought she’d died, as memories of her short life bombarded her rapidly and unsequentially: her first nights on the street, freezing and worried about the others who would surely kill her; the pedophilic cousin who forced her to play his odd ‘games’; the first of many doses of Dreamtree sap; the fire that engulfed her mother and sister; blood on her hands with no idea whose it was; Sid’s warm and unyielding presence as they shared a blanket during a heavy snowfall. When she opened her eyes her first sight was of Nicolaus, the ad hoc colony director, reaching for her with a hand completely and cleanly detached from his rubbery arm. Behind him, the board that had displayed an isohyetal map of the planet below Q.E. 284 flickered wildly and incoherently with random sines every so often. This all encompassed what seemed to be the shuttle’s demurral to cognitive reality, time and light and matter and space all randomly folding and unfolding into itself.

Space finally caught up and snapped back into place around them, and the shuttle and everyone with it was deposited directly in the middle of a greenfield development. The air was breathable, if a little oversaturated with oxygen, and the temperature was mild, but only a tiny handful of the shuttle’s passengers were able to pick themselves up to look around: she, Sid, Elisha, and half a dozen other street kids from their little gang, but none of the adults. Apart from some minor bruising and cuts from the fall, they were unpained and wanted to leave the crash site quickly. There were…THINGS…beginning to converge on the site, and they started pushing their way through and around these strange creatures who let them go, leaving them unadmonished even when they accidentally hit one too hard or knocked them over completely. With the instinct of kids always on the lookout for those who wished to hurt them, they found a cave with a double-blind entrance and eerily, but not unwelcomed, nonresonant walls. 

Emma spoke after a minute of struggling to catch her breath, unable to keep the observation to herself: “Hey, they called us something when they saw us…sounded like ‘Zervanite’.”

“I saw where they came from…looked kinda like a pantechnicon…a bazaar or market,” Elisha clarified at their blank looks.

“This whole place reminds me of a story I heard when I was little, about a magical place called Absecon,” Sid finally joined in.

“Enough about fairy tales and stupid names…in case you didn’t notice, this isn’t Heliotrope and THEY weren’t humans!” said Vic, his abrasively uncoaxing manner causing Kelopa, the youngest of them, to scurry for safety behind Sid’s gentle bulk.

“And if they ever see you, they’ll disprize all of us and we’ll never understand what’s going on,” Elisha said scornfully, glaring at Vic.

“Well, unless they can understand codeless Q.E. metaphysical mathematics, I don’t think we’ll ever know,” Jernej, their resident genius, spoke sadly.

“Screw you and your stupid math,” Vic snapped with his usual doggish charm. “You can hide here and wait to get slaughtered by weird alien monsters, or we can be Krebs and take them out before they even think about getting us!”

“As much as I hate agreeing with Vic, he has at least half a point…this cave only goes down further, and we’re not exactly hypogeous creatures,” Emma said thoughtfully, biting her thumbnail.

“And you’re only half-right yourself, Emma,” said Iseult, dropping down behind all of them, clothes and face covered in clay and dirt. “It’s a tight fit, but there are a few chimneys that let out on top of this cliff, and the rocks up there are moutonned enough where we can watch them from the ridge without being seen.”

“Well, we can’t just stand here doing nothing…” Elisha said nervously, looking between Emma, Vic, and Iseult, and a few minutes passed before she realized that the bait she’d thrown would remain tugless. With a sigh and a slight nod to Issie, they followed their prediscoverer to the Cliffside. Once they’d all resituated themselves comfortably, they spent their time watching the flurry of activity both at the open market and at the site of their shuttle and the bodies they’d left behind.

Emma wasn’t certain how the others felt about the crash or what, if anything, they experience, but she was glad that they’d agreed, mutually and silently, to keep up a temporary z.o.d. on anything relating to the disastrous Q.E. break. Instead, they spent their time watching the creatures from afar, scouring for hints in their actions and behaviours that could lead them to a better understanding of their unintentional captors. For all their attentiveness, they were still unable to form any clear pictures of the inhabitants, and they were forced to concede temporary defeat as the sun slipped behind the hindermost cliffs. Tired, hungry, and distraught, they all piled together for warmth and security as they would have done on the streets, and Emma sang the only song she knew, an epithalamion she heard often from the church she slept near, to eventually lull them all to the thankful oblivion of sleep.

They all awoke the next day to Vic screaming an endless slur of obscenities to the rhythmic thuds of a heavy object being thrown against an immovable force, and when they finally got to him they found that the entrance to the cave no longer led outside but into a huge glass-walled structure, like a greenhouse, though Vic’s relentless assault with rocks had yet to even chip the ‘glass’, let alone break it. Sid, Elisha, and Issie quickly grabbed Vic to stop his destructive rage, and Kleopa darted around them, picking up a letter and syringe that had fallen unnoticed; Emma recognized the narcotic and gave Vic the full dose, and as he slumped down she looked over the note, the drug-fact sheet that came with the sedative and a subpostscript printed in an unfamiliar hand: ‘Please calm, we talk then’. While she wouldn’t have chosen a narcotic to use…she knew from experience how easily it could lead to revolvingly greater abuse…as soon as Vic was lowered to the ground three of the creatures walked into view near the sole door of the structure. These beings were odd…tall and slender with mottled skin coloring that turned iridescent blue and green in full sunlight and an absolute lack of readily identifiable gender clues, from hair to prepeusing skin. Their expressions were also neutral, no malice or curiosity or friendliness, so for all she knew they could be anything from gawkers at a new exhibit to a set of Kohen looking at their next ritual sacrifices.

One of the creatures finally stepped up to the glass, face to face with Emma and Kleopa, and showed them a small cloth bundle; when it unfolded the cloth Emma saw Rosemarie’s most prized possession within, a Heliotrope Military Commendation that she’d earned in the frontlines of the Helio-Verden war. A second stepped up with another cloth; this one contained a fragment of cuneiform from Sumer, a prehistoric civilization from Homeworld Earth. Finally the third stepped up, and their cloth contained a spray of tiny pink and white flowers called Escallionia Langleyensis, the gift of which was an overture of friendship.

“Emma…it’s the Guaìra Transmission,” Sid said with wonder and fear. In Earth’s earliest days of FTL exploration, the world’s scientists and linguists met to set down a single message to represent humanity to any potential extraterrestrial life, casting aside all of the old conflicting and nonequaliing transmissions before it. Of course, this was long before the eventual days of intergalactic planetary aerography, and as map after map turned up with no living creatures larger than amoeba, the Guaìra Transmission was reduced to a footnote in elementary history and promptly forgotten. Emma knew only because Eliphaz, Elisha’s father, had been a history teacher before falling on hard times, and when he was particularly high on Dreamtree sap he would talk for hours and hours, lecturing to an invisible audience of students, though only Emma had the patience to listen to him and keep him from hurting himself. Eventually, he took too much sap and was determined to prove the historical relationship between humans and flies, and though they all tried to stop him by reminding him that humans didn’t have wings or compound eyes or haltere, he leapt off the top of the grubby tenement apartment building where they had been squatting.

Emma placed her hands on the glass, fingers spread and palms flat, and when the cuneiform creature placed its’ hand over her own she was assaulted by images and sounds, much like she experienced on the shuttle, but many of the memories were not her own: a powerful man with an angry red face lashing Vic’s body and back until he collapsed; running fast through the back alley mazes with stolen bread only to find her little brother dead and ‘Issie’ scrawled all over the walls with his blood; Elisha peeking around the corner of a doorway, wondering why daddy isn’t grading papers tonight; shivering and crying in the postrostral chamber in a church and wondering how the priest knew that Kleopa’s name would never be in the Book of Heaven no matter how many times he purified her with the sacred flog; sitting in a corner in the alleyway while the rain washed away the blood of the neighbor’s little girl and dog that had been spilt when he killed them for his mom’s debts to the syndicate when she couldn’t even remember that his name was Posidonius.

The creatures stepped back once the transferal was done and Emma was profoundly shaken…these beings knew the worst of their lives and, by proxy, the worst of humanity, the fact that humans spent more time at the foot of the altar of Ares and Gynaecothoenas than Apollo and Pax and yet, even knowing that, they still opened the door with a promise to protect and love the orphans from the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My second FWFL, and I think it came out better than the first one at least. This is built off of the universe I made for [That They Exist](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5266709), though this story is considerably earlier in the timeline. I do encourage you to read That They Exist (big surprise), but the only thing you really need to know for this story is that Q.E. stands for Quantum Entanglement, and it has been developed far enough to transport ships and people.


	14. Under Duress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it seems easier to suffer in silence than to speak up for justice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: Say May He’s Careful I’ve Through Bigger Happen Leg Leaf Range Raw Letter Soft Busy Gradually Doctor Judge Youth Move April

“April, he may say that he’s on the right track, but you have to be careful with him.” April glared at Lindy with one eyebrow raised, which was enough for Lindy to know that she needed to elaborate. “Ok…look, I’ve been through this same deal. He comes in with a soft approach, sees you’re unhappy, and gives you a letter that promises to show you how to earn whatever happiness you want, and when you come back he’ll tell you that bigger and better things will happen if you stay. Before you know it you’ll move into his compound and he will keep you busy so you don’t notice how he’ll gradually take over every aspect of your life. By the time you notice, it’s too late…he owns you completely, and you’ll love him for it.”

April sighed, bending down to brush a dew-covered autumn leaf off of her leg. Within this close of a range, Lindy noticed wide bands of raw, pink skin on April’s wrists as they peeked briefly from the cuffs of her hoodie. Lindy had worked under the shelter’s doctor long enough to recognize those tell-tale signs of restraints that had been fought against. Maybe it wasn’t too late after all.

“April, please listen to me,” she said, grabbing her by the shoulders so they faced one another. “Three more kids from the youth group are missing, no trace. We know this bastard’s behind it, but we have no proof. You’ve seen something, haven’t you? Something that made him ‘punish’ you?” April looked down and away, temporarily avoiding the question, but she eventually nodded, rubbing one of her wrists gently in remembered pain. “Then I need to take you to the courthouse and let you testify to the police and the judge. This guy is really bad news, and he needs to be arrested and locked up before any more kids get hurt, April. He’s left you alone for now, but there will come a time when he’ll realize that you know too much and you will die.” April’s face betrayed no emotion…she’d gotten good at covering her reactions…but her eyes said everything Lindy needed to know. She knew, and she was terrified.


	15. Gifts for the Magi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Humanity's saviours require certain gifts, and humanity is happy to provide them no matter what they asked for. No one ever thinks to question 'why' until it's too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: Piece Habit Start Example Element Gift Railroad Bigger Require Allow Farther Service Seed Fall Better Trail Weak Were Occasionally Simply fix

**Click-ka-clack…click-ka-clack…click-ka-clack** The rhythmic percussion of the wheels on the metal railroad tracks had already lulled most of them to sleep, and Key knew she wouldn’t be much farther behind them. She did her best to fight it, to ignore the lulling rhythm, the gentle sway, and the narcotics that had been mixed into their water when they first boarded, but all three elements were crafted so that no one could simply remain awake. With little choice, she finally settled into a doze, the closest she could achieve to remaining alert.

Key made up one of a dozen children who had been selected as a gift for the Magi, the enigmatic saviors of what remained of humanity. Earth had collapsed under the weight of all it’s self-inflicted wars, and by the time humanity realized this they found themselves under threat of absolute engulfment by alien creatures, nightmarish chimera that had fur and scales, venomous claws and serrated teeth, bipedal stances and weapons technology that made humans’ weaponry seem like flint-tipped spears. Their fall should have been swift, but the Magi came from nowhere to protect the weak humans, and the conquerors were definitively driven off.

These Magi were never seen, as they chose to communicate through avatars…humans who supposedly gave them permission to take them over, so they became the body and voice. The first thing they iterated to humanity was that their protection would not be a free service. They would require certain gifts occasionally, such as a compliment of children among other things. Such was the gratefulness and desperation of humanity that they would allow these things, and gladly, if it would eventually make their lives better. So, once every five years or so, one commune would be selected to send what children and goods they could along a tiring trail which ended at the storehouse just outside the massive compound where the Magi lived.

Key awoke with a start, automatically reaching for the knife she stowed in her vest by habit, before the chains caught at her wrists and prevented further movement. Just like that, she was reminded of her current predicament and then realized that the train had stopped. All the other children were asleep, and when she heard movement near the front of their car she immediately went limp and controlled her breathing, pretending to be asleep for whatever had come for them. After a short time she felt something lift her up, and when she dared to sneak a peek through slitted eyelids she caught a swift gleam of metal reflecting an overhead light. Their handlers were drones, much like the ones that delivered missives and occasional packages to the communes. In time, she felt the drone lower her onto a soft bed and draw a blanket around her. As soon as the light disappeared and she heard a door in the distance close, Key abandoned her ruse.

Sitting upright in bed, she waited for her eyes to become adjusted to the scant ambient light that seemed to come through small, long vents at the top of the walls. Looking around, she realized that the room they were in was bigger than necessary for the twelve beds it held. She swung her feet over the edge of her bed, noticing in passing that her shoes had been removed at some point, and crept around the other eleven beds. The other kids were fine, just locked in their narcotic sleep for the time being. Moving along, she finally came to a door, closed but unlocked. Opening it silently and carefully she looked through the crack she’d made. A bright hallway ran either way from the door, but it appeared to be deserted. She made the crack large enough for her to slip through and immediately closed it afterwards.

Key hurried along the hallway, encountering no one, but the seed of survival in her led her to some cover out of sight of the open hallway. A panel behind her hiding spot proved to be access to the maintenance crawlways. Hurrying along them, she led herself through so many turns and backtracks that she lost any sense of direction. Eventually she came upon a secure gate, thick metal bars embedded horizontally to either end of the crawlway. Normally she could get past obstacles like this with no problem, but there was no way to fix this. Instead, she backtracked a short ways and ducked into a side passage. About halfway along, the plates were weakened, and she didn’t realize this until a piece of it shrieked when she set her weight on it, the only warning she got before the tunnel collapsed under her, sending her tumbling into the room below.

She was unable to move for a bit, stars popping in front of her eyes from where she hit her head and her back screaming in agony. Once she could see again, it took all her willpower to not scream in fear and panic. The room she fell in held three beings, vaguely human in shape but seemingly composed of nothing more than a shifting nimbus of light. After a mutual period of surprise and shock, one of them stood and began to slowly approach Key. She in turn backed up as far as she could, back finally hitting the wall as she tried her best to melt into it. Her thoughts raced, wondering what they would do to her…kill her? Make an example of her? Mate with her?

The inevitable finally happened, and the light-creature knelt down to her level and softly stroked her cheek with a hand-like appendage. Through that touch, Key felt something unexpected…hope, wonder, and boundless joy. Once she settled down, the light-creature embraced her and held her close.

“My little girl…a child of my own! Thank you!”  
 


	16. Leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you bring your work on vacation, and sometimes it follows you there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: spirit automobile apartment slowly then walk broad official flew touch mistake bite improve both anywhere studying leave golden month ship factor

Iridi couldn’t even remember the last time she’d gone on leave. The military had been her family and the ship had been her home since she was sixteen. Whenever she’d seen that her rotation was coming up for leave, she made sure to ensure that she’d be unavoidably busy for the time or, if that failed, to hack into the personnel calendar and set herself on a different rotation, preferably one that was a year or longer away. She supposed that it would be inevitable that some anal-retentive official would eventually catch on to her manipulations, though she wasn’t sure how she’d managed to go unnoticed for six years. When her Captain finally cornered her, she expected to be court-marshaled and dishonorably discharged, seeing as her methods went far beyond ‘rookie mistakes’. Instead, she’d been ordered to take at least a month’s leave and spending the time anywhere except the station that had become their semi-permanent dock.

Two days later, Iridi stared apathetically out of the window of the slowly-moving automobile as it flew over a field of golden grass, the rotors just high enough to not even touch a single swaying blade. She’d chosen a nearby agricultural planet in which she’d rented an apartment in the only settlement that was large enough to call a town. Rather than putting up a long and unproductive protest against this mandatory leave, she decided to follow the order to the letter, if not the spirit. Downloaded on her datapad were the materials she needed for the upcoming officers’ entry exam, and she would psned her time in this quiet backwater studying for it. To either rest or improve her chances at clawing her way up the military ladder…there was no reason she couldn’t do both.

Later on towards the evening, after she’d settled what few possessions she had into the apartment, she decided to grab a quick bite before retiring for the night. The broad central avenue was the equivalence to this towns’ downtown area, and she saw several people going along whatever business they had while she continued to walk among them. She eventually decided on a small sidewalk café that still had a few customers lingering about, and a generous tip smoothed over any ruffled feathers about her arrival so close to their closing time. With a local brew in hand and a hot meal on its’ way, she idly watched the population as they walked by, absorbed into their own little worlds with whatever domestic matters they seemed to find important. As her food arrived with a second cold beer, she upended the current bottle to drain it before she started on a new one. In reaching for the second one, though, she saw someone who managed to sneak by her perif in the couple of seconds she wasn’t watching. This…HE…certainly hadn’t been a factor in her plans before, and now she was forced to confront it whether she liked it or not.


	17. A Simple Good Deed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bell may not be the best at keeping herself out of trouble, but at least she has good enough instincts to know what's worth saving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word List: step captain lower club grandmother aside box jar has pour meal little instance provide condition happen hope suggest how like fish

“I’d advise you not to take one step further.” Bell stopped cold, heeding the voice in the darkness, especially when she heard the telltale click of a hammer being pulled back on a flintlock, preparing to fire. “Good girl. Now lower your weapon, nice and easy…let’s make sure it touches the ground.” She crouched slowly, setting down the ogre’s femur that she’d been using as a club. When she stood again, she felt the whisper of another person’s warm body near her, smelled a musk of gunpowder and oil and salt water, as her unseen captor kicked aside her weapon.

“Um…I…I’m sorry…I meant no harm, I just…” Her stumbling apology ended with an undignified squeak as she felt the barrel of the gun pressed into the back of her skull. Her trembling was uncontrollable and she felt tears leak out of the corners of her eyes as she squeezed them shut. She was at least grateful that her last meal consisted of so little food. In her present condition she had no doubt that she would undignify herself further by vomiting uncontrollably.

“Calm down.” The voice was gentler in that statement, and the pressure of the gun eased though it didn’t entirely leave. “Simply do as I suggest and we’ll both be on our separate ways in no time.” His tone was calm, and she felt the faintest glimmer of hope that she might walk out of this alive. “Now, tell me your name.”

“B-Bell…the others call me Bell, sir.”

“What others? Are you with a group? Are they looking for you?” The tone harshened again, frightened, and the hard pressure of the barrel returned.

“N-no! No, no, nothing like that! I-I didn’t have parents to provide me with a name, sir! The other orphans, the guards, they’re the ones who call me Bell. Really, they don’t care where I’m at or if I happen to be alive or dead!”

“I…see.” The barrel of the gun disappeared entirely and instead she felt a hand on her shoulder attempting to provide comfort. “I’m sorry, Bell. I shouldn’t have overreacted.”

“It’s…it’s okay, really.” And it was. Unlike many others, she didn’t get the sense that this one was deliberately trying to scare or threaten her, simply intimidate.

“No…here, sit down.” The hand guided her through the dark and eased her down onto what felt like a wooden box. A few moments later an oil lantern sputtered to life and illuminated her captor and surroundings. They seemed to be in a dry goods storehouse, if the bolts of cloth and sacks of flour and meal were anything to go by. She’d been led to a makeshift dining area consisting of a crate for a table and two smaller boxes for chairs. A young man, maybe only two or so years ahead of her sixteen, took the seat across from her. He had long black hair, long enough to pull into a braid, silvery eyes set into a lean face with fine features, and a slender body swathed in silken clothing and a long blue overcoat that bore the emblem of a pirate captain. Once side of his cream-colored blouse was heavily stained red, and she noticed how one hand was protectively cradling the area.

“Oh…you’re hurt!” Her own instincts went into overdrive with that. She’d never been able to stand seeing someone in pain, especially when she was able to help. Without thinking and disregarding his warning protest, she knelt down next to him and pushed his overcoat off and his blouse up so she could clearly see what was wrong. 

“W-wait! I told you not to come near me! Do you want to die, crazy woman?”

“I can help,” she remarked shortly, swinging her tattered pack off her shoulders and rummaging through it. “You’ve been cut and the knife that did it was deliberately filthy. If it’s not taken care of soon, the infection will spread and you will likely die.” The guards enjoyed using that tactic, especially as they knew they could get away with it. She’d seen more than a few orphans die from wounds that were little more than scratches.

“Wha…how do you…”

“Orphans make handy targets for the guards to practice on as they are cheaper than training dummies, sir.” She finally found what she was looking for: a bluish glass jar who’s contents sloshed sluggishly inside. She worked the cork out of the top and got him to hold his blouse so she could pour some of the syrupy liquid into her hands. “Now hold still. This will sting.” With no other warning she placed both palms flat onto the wound, introducing the salve in the most direct way she knew. He flinched under her treatment but held still while she rubbed it further and further in. After a time she finally stopped, sitting back on her heels to catch her breath while he looked at the area incredulously.

“My wound…it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s even healing already.” He finally looked at her while she rummaged for some cloth to wipe her hands off with, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You’re one of those witches, aren’t you?”

“That has been suggested before, sir,” she replied, her words clipped with annoyance. “But in this instance you are wrong. Grandmother…an old lady who watched over me for some time before she dies…was an apothecary. She taught me a lot about all the natural things in this world that can be used to hurt or heal.” She sighed, repacking the jar and cloth and closing her pack before standing. “I’m sorry I intruded, sir, and for touching you without your permission. I’ll leave you be now, but I really would like my club back.”

“Leave??? Don’t be daft!” He intercepted her with a swift movement, forcing her to settle on the box-chair again. “I would be an idiot to let you go after what you’ve done!” Bell’s stomach knotted up again when he reached into one of the open crates, but all he returned with was two pieces of dried and salted fish and a bottle of wine. “Eat first. It’s the least I owe you.”

“Oh…t-thank you…” They shared a meal and two bottles of wine before he approached the subject again.

“Bell…come with me. I could use a medic on my ship. We’ll travel together, go to far-flung ports, and I will ensure you never want for anything.”

“I…thank you…I appreciate the offer, but…aren’t you a pirate?”

“Oh, this?” He tugged the overcoat with a half grin. “This was from the last unlucky bastard who tried to cross me.” He held out his hand and, at last, she took it.


End file.
